BACKWARD GLANCES - Seventy-six year old RFHS class ring turns up in Oregon

See what was happening in Redwood Falls 50, 25 and 10 years ago this week.

By Joshua Dixon, Staff Writer

Redwood Falls Gazette

By Joshua Dixon, Staff Writer

Posted Mar. 22, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 22, 2012 at 9:16 PM

By Joshua Dixon, Staff Writer

Posted Mar. 22, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 22, 2012 at 9:16 PM

Redwood Falls, Minn.

1962—50 years ago
• The Minnesota Valley Telephone company installed a new, $29,000 dial switchboard that let residents of Franklin call each other directly instead of having to go through a switchboard operator.
• In other telephone news, Northwestern Bell Telephone Co. in Redwood Falls installed a special phone line in the bedroom of Karen Fox, 13, so she could talk with her friends while she was recovering from spine surgery that would keep her bedridden until at least June.
• Four Redwood teams — representing Thriftway, Hi-Way Lanes, Marigold Dairy, and Patten TV — competed in the state women’s bowling tournament.
• The public school district approached the Redwood TV Improvement Corp. to see about adding KTCA Channel 2 public TV to the local system.
In exchange for a $15,000 donation from the district, the schools would get educational TV programming they could show in the classrooms.
• A representative from the Minnesota Valley Natural Gas Co. told the city council that Redwood wouldn’t be getting natural gas any time soon, at least until the cost of building a main supply line from Mankato dropped enough to make it cost-effective.
1987—25 years ago
• Planning for the second annual Women of Today MIC-weekend parade went great, with more organizations and businesses planning on taking part than the previous year.
“Last year at this time we had hardly any local people at all. It was all out-of-town people,” said Women of Today member Julia Becker.
• Dr. Manfred Nozar, mayor of the West German town of Neusass — official sister city of Redwood Falls —, sent a letter to the Redwood Falls City Council inviting them to visit Neusass in June 1988, when the German town would be celebrating the opening of its new courthouse.
• The municipal liquor store opened a section, “The Back Room Bargain Store”, with closeout prices on case lots and some wines.
• One hundred and six snowbirds attended the fifth annual winter picnic for Redwood County residents, held in Mesa, Arizona.
• Parents protested against the school district’s proposal to save money by dropping its computer class.
The school’s logic, explained Principal Ivor Christopherson, was that computers were becoming so common that students were already picking up what they needed to know about computers outside of school.
2002—10 years ago
• The Washington County Sheriff’s Department in Hillsboro, Oregon, called the Redwood Gazette with a mystery.
It seems part of the evidence recovered from a crime scene in Oregon was a Redwood Falls High School Class of 1926 ring engraved with the initials LLG.
A quick examination of a 1926 yearbook turned up someone with those initials: Lucille L. Grapp. However, no one at the Gazette or school district could find her location, or if she was still alive.
• Redwood Area School Superintendent Rick Ellingworth won (or lost, depending on how you look at it) the Kiss-a-Pig fundraiser for the Redwood Senior Center.
• The RVHS boys basketball team ended a historic season with a 50-43 loss to Lewiston-Altura at the Xcel Energy Center to become the third best team in Class “AA” division.
• Jenny Thul, a first grade teacher at Reede Gray Elementary School — and former United States Army, Europe Soldier of the Year for 1989 — put middle school students through basic training to give them a taste of the military.
• As part of the student MIC contest, Thomas Kuehn and Gerald Vasquez invented the “Backboard Stopper”, a net that kept basketballs from getting stuck behind the backboard.